Fracking Falters

Wind power is cheaper than natural gas in some states, reports the Dallas News. Solar is approaching that milestone:

“U.S. solar and wind power generating capacity is expected to see double-digit growth in 2016,” said Adam Sieminski, the head of the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

This comes as America’s fracking boom is starting to falter. The crash in oil prices is shrinking the profits for drillers. Estimated U.S. crude oil production dropped by 120,000 barrels a day last month and is forecast to keep going down for most of the coming year at least.

Coal continues its downward spiral. Even coal areas that weathered past hard times, such as Indiana and western Kentucky, are having a tough year, and major coal companies are going bankrupt.

Amazon, which is building a network of wind farms and also testing Tesla storage batteries, announced the project Monday. The Amazon Wind Farm US East, to be built in Perquimans and Pasquotank counties, will power the online retailer’s cloud-computing division, Amazon Web Services, as part of a corporate goal of achieving energy sustainability.

The sprawling 34-square-mile wind farm will start with 104 turbine spires rising from the state’s eastern flatlands. The $400 million energy project will be built by Spanish wind farm developer Iberdrola Renewables and will start generating electricity for Amazon’s data centers in late 2016.

With wind coming into its own and a new solar farm just up the road in Leicester, NC, times they are a-changin’. If that’s bad news for fracking, all the better.